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NVIDIA may still be prepping to launch the GeForce RTX 3080 20GB Ampere GPU


If you have been following the latest tech news and Nvidia’s roadmap since past few months or so, then you might have heard rumors that Nvidia was allegedly prepping to launch more SKUs in the current Ampere GPU lineup.

The following SKUs were on the roadmap according to previous rumors, the RTX 3080 20GB, RTX 3070 16GB, & RTX 3060 Ti/Super, respectively. Even GALAX’s roadmap and Gigabyte’s Watch Dogs Legion code redeeming website also hinted that Nvidia plans to release more SKUs based on the 8nm Ampere architecture.

Last month, there was chatter on the web that NVIDIA might have cancelled the production of the RTX 3080 20GB & RTX 3070 16GB Ampere-based SKUs. More importantly, all these cards were planned for a launch this December. And now, one of Nvidia’s AIB partner MSI has recently submitted the RTX 3080 20GB model entries to the Eurasian Economic Commission, as spotted by @KOMACHI_ENSAKA.

Though, just because MSI has submitted these entries to the EEC doesn’t guarantee that these GPUs are going to hit the market next month, but MSI has also submitted entries for the RTX 3060 Ti GPU model, which is also planned for a release next month.

According to Expreview, the launch date of this RTX 3060 Ti GPU is December 2nd, 2020. Nvidia has also confirmed the same.

Some official RTX 3060 Ti Ampere GPU official gaming benchmarks were also leaked recently, which showed that this card is faster than the Turing RTX 2080 SUPER GPU. This confirms the card is in Nvidia’s roadmap, and so can be the RTX 3080 20GB variant as well, if MSI’s submission is anything to go by.

But like I mentioned before, EEC submissions do not always guarantee that the Model is going to come out in the Market, unless of course there was some change of plan in Nvidia’s roadmap given to AIBs.

Nonetheless, it appears to be a coincidence that both the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3080 20GB SKUs are spotted in the EEC submission, at the same time. For what it’s worth, several custom AIB RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards are already listed on online Retail/E-tailer shops all across Europe.

We cannot fully confirm any specs, but the GeForce RTX 3080 20GB model is expected to feature the same CUDA core count as the 10GB SKU at 8704 cores.

But it makes little sense for Nvidia to just release a GPU having more VRAM, if the specs remain unchanged, so there are slight chances that Nvidia might release a higher-spec’d x80 series variant in the last moment, to counter AMD’s Big Navi GPU.

The RTX 3080 20GB SKU would be based on the PG132 SKU20 board. But we do know that Nvidia is working on a new Ampere series GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU.

It appears that the green team aims to release a new graphics card to combat AMD’s RX 6800 XT GPU, offering more VRAM and also much beefier specifications than the existing RTX 3080 10GB SKU.

The recent rumors regarding the RTX 3080 Ti specs paint a card having the same CUDA core count as the flagship high-end RTX 3090, sporting 10496 FP32 CUDA cores over the same 320-bit memory bus as the current RTX 3080.

The new details posted by Kopite7kimi suggest that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition/FE graphics card will feature the PG133-SKU15 PCB board/design, and the GA102-250-KD-A1 graphics core.

Assuming this new RTX 3080 Ti model GPU will now have 10496 FP32 CUDA cores, the card will certainly not be cheap, so expect a price within the ballpark of $899-$999 USD range (which would be roughly $249 USD higher than the RX 6800 XT’s price tag).

Based on these new specs, we are basically looking at a RTX 3090-performance level, but at a slightly lower price point. It might be possible that NVIDIA will disable some select blocks on the GA102-250 GPU die, and/or this GPU will feature slightly lower clock speeds as well, but this remains to be seen.

When it comes to the memory specs, the card will feature 20 GB of GDDR6X VRAM, but will retain the same memory speed as the current RTX 3080 GPU at 19 Gbps.

For context, the RTX 3090 features 19.5 Gbps memory speed. Based on the 20 GB VRAM frame buffer, NVIDIA will be using a 320-bit bus interface which gives us a total bandwidth of 760 GB/s. The TGP for the card is set to be the same as the current RTX 3080 10GB SKU, at 320 Watts.

According to a new report from HKEPC, NVIDIA will launch the RTX 3080Ti in January 2021.

Stay tuned for more!